Who says Drum-Major says a man of mould,
Shaking the meek earth with tremendous tread,
And pacing still, a triumph to behold,
Of his own spine at least two yards ahead!
Attorney, grocer, surgeon, broker, duke-
His calling may be anything, who comes
Into a room, his presence a rebuke
To the dejected,as the pipes and drums
Inspired his port! - who mounts his office stairs
As though he led great armies to the fight!
His bulk itself's pure genius, and he wears
His avoirdupois with so much fire and spright
That, though the creature stands but five feet five, You take him
for the tallest He alive.by W.E. Henley from "London Types"

"William Nicholson's woodblock prints of the 1890's were amongst
the most revolutionary British print images of the era. They used
a treatment of form, with a stylised simplification of shape, and
a handling of perspective and picture space which had had no precedent
in British art. Influences of Japanese art, and a parallel thinking
to, if not a direct knowledge of, the ideas of Toulouse Lautrec and
of the Nabis painters in Paris at the same period can certainly be
felt, although there is no record that Nicholson had actually studied
either at this date.

One of the most famous of the groups of prints that Nicholson cut
at this period was the series known as 'London Types'. This was made
at the instigation of William Heinemann, who published all William
Nicholson's early prints.
The series portrays typical figures from London life of the period.The
girls who sat with the baskets of flowers for sale were a familiar
sight near 'Rotten Row' where the fashionable people of London society
rode out on their horses at the edge of Hyde Park by Park Lane. The
impressions of this popular edition were printed by taking a transfer
from his woodblock onto a lithographic stone and adding lithograph
colour" (Weston)